Chopping Down the Cherry Tree

Johnny chopped down the cherry tree today, an appropriate thing to do on President's Day. Well, he didn't chop the whole thing down, just three of the nine trunks. It's more of a cherry grove than a tree. This tall cherry-of-the-many-trunks provides welcome shade to the southwest corner of our house during the summer, but it has grown out of control. It covered the nearby apple and the little Fragrant Dawn Viburnum that tries so hard to bloom all winter.

Since the cherry is very tall and very close to both chicken house and our house, plus on top of my flower beds and the aforementioned apple tree and viburnum, I was afraid many things would be destroyed when its trunks came down. But Johnny cleverly avoided catastrophe with the judicious use of chainsaw, motorized pruning-saw-on-a-pole, ladder, ropes, tractor(to fasten the ropes to), box (for a trunk to land on to keep it off the budded daffodils and blooming primroses)... along with, I suspect, a fair amount of luck.

Pictured is the third and last trunk to fall. You can see how Johnny managed to drop it so it was held up off my flowers by its limbs and by having the butt resting on the stump it had just been severed from. I think Johnny was as surprised as I was at how little damage he did.

In addition to shading the plants below it, the branches of Trunk #3 were blocking my view of our big snag from the stair landing, where I check each morning to see what raptor might be up there. Now I'll have a clear line of sight.

It took three tractor trailer loads of limbs to clear the area, and lots of chainsawing of the trunks and bigger limbs into firewood, but the flowers mostly are intact, as are the viburnum and apple tree. George Washington would be proud.